WHEN we talk about modular platform, some people wax lyrical as if it is the best thing since helical incline fasteners when, in reality, platforms were modular from the getgo.
The model T Ford was offered as a passenger vehicle as well as pick-up truck, which was sometimes called stake-beds because they were essentially flatbed trucks with stakes on the sides to keep stuff from falling over.
If you can make model Ts into pickup trucks, you can make them into goods van, and they were.
Modularity was not really a concept yet at the time; they simply adapted the available platform for many different uses and since cars at the time were built on ladder frame chassis, much the same as trucks and buses and pretty much anything else on four wheels, it was the ladder frame concept that was modular.
The idea of a modular platform made of pressed steel, whether monocoque or semi-monocoque is believed to have originated with Volkswagen, but apparently they did not come up with the idea, instead it was a suggestion by a Dutch Volkswagen importer.
Ben Pons was visiting Wolfsburg in 1947 when he spotted a factory parts transporter built using Type 1 chassis.
This particular parts carrier had the driver’s cab at the back with the load carrying platform ahead.
It was called a plattenwagen, or flatbed carrier and it triggered an idea in Pons, he immediately sketched his wish for a commercial van.
Volkswagen’s first interpretation of the sketch was quite boxy and the immediately saw that it had the potential to become a useful light commercial vehicle.
VW saw that it was a good idea but there was nothing that it could do about it.
The allied powers did not restrict what VW could build; the Beetle was just so popular that everyone was working overtime just to keep up with demand.
In the meantime, VW engineers began building prototypes but found the Type 1 platform not strong enough for application as a van or light commercial vehicle so the prototype had to have ladder frame strengtheners.
The prototype was known as Type 29 and it was a brick of a van, the coefficient of drag was 0.75 which puts it in competition with large trucks semidetached houses or small barns.
Aerodynamicists at the technical university of Braunschweig were roped in, together with their wind tunnel and simple solutions were found in order to make the van a more efficient air cleaver.
The split front window was a key modification and the resulting roof shape helped to bring the drag number down to a more respectable 0.44.
Laughable today, but this actually made it more efficient than the original Beetle which could only cut through the air at 0.48 efficiency.
And it was 1949 before they found some production slots to start making the van in short burst of three months.
The first two versions were Kombi, which is a semi-panel van with two side windows and two rows of seats behind the driver and the commercial which is a panel van.
This was later joined by the single cab utility and the microbus and a luxury microbus with 23 windows. This model was called the Samba in the US and some markets.
The 23-window T1 remains the most desirable of the original Mark 1 Kombis and they can easily command six-digit pricing in the right condition.
The beauty of the Kombi is in its simplicity, the low-power air-cooled engine required little maintenance and this made them desirable to those pursuing a more independent lifestyle that was more hip than most.
Once the tassle-bag and tie-dye crowd took a liking to the Kombi, Volkswagen’s marketing department knew they had a good thing going and milked it well.
The Kombi only became popular as a hippie van in the 1960s because by then they had come onto the used market and are cheap enough for those who resented a full-time job with the man.
The Kombi became a symbol of freedom together with rock and roll, mind expanding cigarettes, loose clothing, round eyewear with tinted glass and sandals.
We all have to thank Ben Pons and his ability to spot the potential of the Plattenwagen as a commercial vehicle.
They never built the Kombi as a hippie wagon, it just became one by virtue of being a true people’s car.
The new Kombi, if it is designed with a certain lifestyle in mind, would simply be an uncomfortable intrusion into a way of thinking and will not last long, just as the new Beetle did not last long because it was designed to be a Beetle not a volkswagen, with a lower case.